The medicinal qualities of the perfect joint

Feeling lucky always, I assumed that chemotherapy would be the piece of cake that some had predicted for me. They said they knew people who were treated with chemotherapy for years and years and meanwhile managed to live a relatively normal life. But by only the fourth cycle of my second round of it, I realised that this wasn’t going to happen in my case. I felt so rotten that it seemed to me that death would have been easier to bear and was probably preferable.

Of course I told myself to get a grip, to put on my metaphorical tin hat and sit it out. No doubt the feeling of being poisoned by novichok or similar would pass eventually. I also reminded myself that chemotherapy was in fact part of my medical treatment, a cure, and that I had a lot to be thankful for. I was warm. I was comfortable. Catriona was up and down the stairs like a sprite with trays, mugs, kisses and good cheer. I had books to read, also delivered from the letterbox to my lap by the hand of Catriona. Thick-paged hardbacks, a hundred years old some of them. All I had to do was lie and read and be patient and pleasant while the church and state village bells struck off the passing hours.

Unfortunately this time chemotherapy affected my mind as well as my body. Result – self-absorption of the crudest sort. Despair. Paranoia. Even rage. No longer the cheerful, doughty, modest, philosophical old sort I’d been aiming to be when the going became soft to heavy in places, but a silly old bastard. And this is the creeping tragedy of dying slowly (or quickly) from cancer.